THE locus classicus of English criticism respecting Fuller has. long been, and no doubt will long be, Coleridge's marginal note, beginning "Wit was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect." It is not easy to speak or think too highly of the genius of Coleridge; but it is much easier to overvalue separate obiter dicta of his, especially dicta of the critical character. For he was as little given to co-ordinate and check his thoughts as to take any other sort of intellectual trouble, and the very genius which made him so often clothe those thoughts in memorable form, makes it necessary to be doubly careful in mistaking the form for the "stuff and substance." His dictum on Fuller, however, has so far received general acceptance from competent persons that probably few critics would refuse to bracket Fuller with Sydney Smith as the wittiest of Englishmen. Some differences of the pair will be found further noticed in these volumes, on the later of them. Here, and as regards Fuller, it may be sufficient to note others. One of his latest editors, Dr. Jessopp, who has also made the comparison with Sydney Smith, has taken occasion, with all due apologies, to tone down, albeit carefully and without any direct antagonism or depreciation, the lofty eulogies which Coleridge and Lamb had bestowed on the author of the Worthies of England. It must have been an ungrateful, but was to some extent a necessary task. For excessive laudation has this drawback, that it constantly creates revulsion in readers who, not quite adjusted to the point of view, endeavour to take it at the bidding of their betters and fail. Such a result would be specially lamentable in Fuller's case, because he is, taken rightly and enjoyed rightly, one of the most delectable of English authors. But it is very likely to happen when such a reader as has just been glanced at goes from extracts and specimens, still more from critical laudations, to his complete works. His two great contemporaries and analogues, Burton and Browne, have nothing to fear from any such process; Fuller perhaps has, and it may possibly be due to a sort of feeling of this that, though he has never wanted for fervent admirers, they seem always rather to have shrunk from paying him the greatest and the most necessary, if the most trying, honour that can be paid to an author by issuing a complete edition of his works. There are many curious contradictions in Fuller's character, both personal and literary, and it is not impossible that the presence of them communicates to his personality and his literature the almost unmatched

piquancy which both possess, and which have never failed to attract fit persons. (A Puritan Cavalier) (Dr. Jessopp calls him a Puritan, and though I should hardly go so far myself, there is no doubt that Fuller leaned far more to the extreme Protestant side than most of his comrades in loyalty), a man of the sincerest and most unaffected piety, who never could resist a joke, an early member of the exact or antiquarian school of historians, who was certainly not a very profound or wide scholar, and who constantly laid himself open to the animadversions of others by his defects in scholarship-Fuller is a most appetising bundle of contradictions. But his contradictions undoubtedly sometimes disgust; and perhaps even some almost insatiable lovers of "the humour of it" may occasionally think that he carries the humour of it too far.

It is however his positive rather than his negative side with which we have chiefly to do. From this side Fuller may be described as having had an extraordinary loyalty to and affection for his native country, which led him to acquire the mass of information laid up in his Church History and Worthies ;) a sincere, though not a very erudite theology; and the above-mentioned wit, which, being the ruling characteristic of his nature, showed itself at all times and in all places. Its direct and immediate effects, if not always exactly suitable to time and place, are always delightful. The memorable anthology in quintessence of Fullerisms which Charles Lamb has collected might be very largely increased, and indeed the work of Dr. Jessopp, to which reference has been made, does so increase it. But though, as has been hinted, the reading. of the great mass of Fuller's work may induce a certain occasional revulsion, it may be doubted whether the full virtue of the Fullerian wit is perceptible till such reading has been undertaken. Only then can the mild wisdom, which hardly ever fails of mildness unless the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, be fully appreciated, and the vivid wit which accompanies it be fully comprehended. The singular fertility in conjoining strange societies of thought, which has generally been considered the essence of wit, is present everywhere, and always delightful. The imagination or fancy, rather—which supplies Fuller with these conjunctions is not poetical, as it was in his nearer contemporary, Browne; it is not erudite and all-compelling, as in the case of his somewhat older contemporary, Burton. It is a little desultory, a very little "Philistine," sometimes a little childish

but it is always and everywhere delightful, and sometimes strangely stimulative and informing.

The indirect literary effects of this peculiarity of Fuller's on his style are noteworthy. For it can hardly be doubted that Fuller's essential quality of thought, the quaint and perpetual bubbling up within him of odd jests, comparisons and what not, had a good deal to do with his comparative freedom from the besetting sin of his time-the sin of long, complicated, overweighted sentences. Although a parenthesis or an additional clause will sometimes suffice for such spirts and fireworks of jest as those in which Fuller, be the subject sacred or profane, be the form of his utterance sermon, essay, history, or what not, must needs indulge, it will not always suffice for them;) and there are many reasons for putting the jest in a sentence by itself, and so leaving the most serious part of the narrative or argument ostensibly uninterrupted. However this may be, it is certain that Fuller, his quaintness excepted, is one of the least antique or obsolete of mid-seventeenth-century writers. That he is one of the most agreeable and also one of the most instructive is the unanimous verdict of competent critics; and if some of those critics dwell most on their sense of pleasure, and others most on the limitations which they perceive in the giver of it, that is not a very serious difference. But it is impossible not to express regret at the absence of a really complete edition of his works. Comparatively few people may have noticed how great is the effect of diversity in mechanical presentment of books on the mind of the reader, but his must be an unusually critical mind who brings exactly the same faculties of appreciation to a seventeenth-century folio, to one of the stately quartos of the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of this, to a bookseller's octavo of the early Victorian period, and to batches of reprints of all shapes and sizes since. There ought to be a complete Fuller; and in any country but England there would long since have been one.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

THE NATURAL COMMODITIES OF HAMPSHIRE

RED DEER

GREAT store of these were lately in the New Forest, so called because newly made by King William the Conqueror. Otherwise, ten years hence, it will be six hundred years old. Indeed, as Augustus Cæsar is said to have said of Herod King of Judæa, that it was better to be his hog than his child; so was it most true of that King William, that it was better to have been his stag than his subject; the one being by him spared and preserved, the other ruined and destroyed: such was the devastation he made of towns in this country, to make room for his game. And it is worth our observing the opposition betwixt the characters of

KING EDGAR

Templa Deo, templis monachos, monachis dedit agros."

And now was the south-west of this country made a forest indeed, if, as an antiquary hath observed, a forest be so called, quia foris est, because it is set open and abroad. The stags therein were stately creatures, jealous, revengeful; insomuch that I have been credibly informed, that a stag, unable for the present to master another who had taken his hind from him, waited his opportunity, till his enemy had weakened himself with his wantonness, and then killed him. Their flesh may well be good, whose very horns are accounted cordial. Besides, there is a concave in the neck of a green-headed stag, when above his first crossing, wherein are many worms, some two inches in length, very useful in physic, and therefore carefully put up by Sir Theodore Mayerne and other skilful physicians. But, I believe, there be few stags now in New Forest, fewer harts, and

not any harts-royal (as escaping the chase of a king); though in time there may be some again.

HONEY

Although this country affordeth not such lakes of honey as some authors relate found in hollow trees in Muscovy; nor yieldeth combs equal to that which Pliny reporteth seen in Germany, eight feet long; yet produceth it plenty of this necessary and profitable commodity.

Indeed Hampshire hath the worst and best honey in England; worst, on the heath, hardly worth five pounds the barrel; best, in the champaign, where the same quantity will well nigh be sold for twice as much. And it is generally observed, the finer the wheat and wool, both which are very good in this county, the purer the honey of that place.

Honey is useful for many purposes, especially that honey which is the lowest in any vessel. For it is an old and true rule "the best oil is in the top; the best wine in the middle; and the best honey in the bottom." It openeth obstructions, cleareth the breast from those humours which fall from the head; with many other sovereign qualities, too many to be reckoned up in a winter's day.

However, we may observe three degrees, or kinds rather, of honey :—(1) Virgin honey, which is the purest, of a late swarm which never bred bees. (2) Chaste honey, for so I may term all the rest which is not sophisticated with any addition. (3) Harlot honey, as which is adulterated with meal and other trash mingled therewith.

Of the first and second sort I understand the counsel of Solomon, "My son, eat honey, for it is good:" good absolutely in the substance, though there may be excess in the quantity thereof.

WAX

This is the cask, where honey is the liquor; and, being yellow by nature, is by art made white, red, and green, which I take to be the dearest colours, especially when appendant on parchment. Wax is good by day and by night, when it affordeth light, for sight the clearest; for smell the sweetest; for touch the cleanliest. Useful in law to seal instruments; and in physic, to mollify sinews,